Well-Being and Time

Author(s):  
Richard Kraut

A full defense is presented of the thesis that there are two orders of value, one incommensurably superior to the other. To see this, we must realize that the goods that comprise well-being do not diminish in value over time. Plato was therefore right to hold that we should want to possess the good eternally. Lives typically contain a combination of good and bad; a whole life should be counted good on balance by aggregating—adding the good and subtracting the bad. No period of life inherently has less prudential value than any other. Narrative factors should figure in our assessment of how well a life goes only when they affect our experience. There is some truth in Goethe’s line: “Only the present is our happiness” (Faust, Part Two). Aristotle’s notion that well-being needs a “complete” life contains both insights and errors.

Author(s):  
Melanie K. T. Takarangi ◽  
Deryn Strange

When people are told that their negative memories are worse than other people’s, do they later remember those events differently? We asked participants to recall a recent negative memory then, 24 h later, we gave some participants feedback about the emotional impact of their event – stating it was more or less negative compared to other people’s experiences. One week later, participants recalled the event again. We predicted that if feedback affected how participants remembered their negative experiences, their ratings of the memory’s characteristics should change over time. That is, when participants are told that their negative event is extremely negative, their memories should be more vivid, recollected strongly, and remembered from a personal perspective, compared to participants in the other conditions. Our results provide support for this hypothesis. We suggest that external feedback might be a potential mechanism in the relationship between negative memories and psychological well-being.


2021 ◽  
pp. 194855062110390
Author(s):  
Anthony M. Evans ◽  
M. Christina Meyers ◽  
Philippe P. F. M. Van De Calseyde ◽  
Olga Stavrova

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations around the world rapidly transitioned to enforced remote work. We examined the relationship between personality and within-person changes in five job outcomes (self-reported performance, engagement, job satisfaction, burnout, and turnover intentions) during this transition. We conducted a four-wave longitudinal study, from May to August 2020, of employees working from home due to COVID-19, N = 974. On average, self-reported performance decreased over the course of the study, whereas the other outcomes remained stable. There was also significant between-person variability in job outcomes. Extroversion and conscientiousness, two traits traditionally associated with desirable outcomes, were associated with deteriorating outcomes over time. Extroverted employees and conscientious employees became less productive, less engaged, and less satisfied with their jobs; and extroverted employees reported increasing burnout. These results add to our understanding of how personality predicts within-person changes in performance, well-being, and turnover intentions during the pandemic.


2019 ◽  
pp. 089484531986169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Marcionetti ◽  
Jérôme Rossier

Self-esteem, general self-efficacy, and career adaptability, which include career concern, control, curiosity, and confidence, are important resources for adolescents who are required to make important educational and professional choices. No studies have investigated how these resources codevelop over time and their impact on life satisfaction. To more precisely study this codevelopment and the impact of these resources on well-being, 357 Swiss adolescents were assessed 3 times during the last 17 months of compulsory school. The results showed an interrelationship between career adaptability and self-efficacy and a unidirectional effect of self-esteem on life satisfaction over time. They also highlighted the importance of career adapt-ability concerns for predicting the other three career adapt-abilities. Overall, the results suggested that in adolescents, higher levels of career adaptability may favor higher levels of general self-efficacy and that higher levels of self-esteem may induce higher levels of life satisfaction. Implications for practice are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Wojcieszak ◽  
Sjifra de Leeuw ◽  
Andreu Casas ◽  
Xudong Yu ◽  
Ericka Menchen-Trevino ◽  
...  

Abstract This preregistered project examines the general belief that news has a beneficial impact on society. We test news exposure effects on desirable outcomes, i.e., political knowledge and participation, and detrimental outcomes, i.e., attitude and affective polarization, negative system perceptions, and worsened individual well-being. We rely on two complementary over-time experiments that combine participants' survey self-reports and their behavioral browsing data: one that incentivized participants taking a ‘news vacation’ for a week (N = 797; 30M visits) in the US, the other of 'news binging' for two weeks (N = 828; 17M visits) in Poland. Across both experiments, we demonstrate that reducing or increasing news exposure has little -- if any -- impact on the positive or negative outcomes tested. These robust null effects emerge irrespective of participants' prior levels of news consumption and whether prior news diet was like-minded, and regardless of compliance levels. We argue that these findings reflect the reality of limited news exposure in the real world, with news exposure comprising roughly 3.5\% of citizens' online information diet.


Author(s):  
Jennifer Hawkins

Chapter 12 explores radical personal change and its relationship to well-being, welfare, or prudential value. Many theorists of welfare are committed to what is here called the future-based reasons view (FBR), which holds (1) that the best prudential choice in a situation is determined by which possible future has the greatest net welfare value for the subject and (2) what determines facts about future welfare are facts about the subject and the world at that future time. Although some cases of radical change are intuitively prudentially good, many cases of really radical change are not. Yet FBR has trouble explaining this. Many people instinctively reach for the notion of identity to solve this problem—arguing that really radical change cannot be good because it alters who someone is. Yet, as the chapter argues, there are reasons to doubt that appeals to identity are appropriate. The chapter ends with the suggestion that prudential facts may explain why and when retaining identity matters, rather than the other way around, and points to a possible way forward for a theorist of welfare committed to FBR.


Crisis ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedrich Martin Wurst ◽  
Isabella Kunz ◽  
Gregory Skipper ◽  
Manfred Wolfersdorf ◽  
Karl H. Beine ◽  
...  

Background: A substantial proportion of therapists experience the loss of a patient to suicide at some point during their professional life. Aims: To assess (1) the impact of a patient’s suicide on therapists distress and well-being over time, (2) which factors contribute to the reaction, and (3) which subgroup might need special interventions in the aftermath of suicide. Methods: A 63-item questionnaire was sent to all 185 Psychiatric Clinics at General Hospitals in Germany. The emotional reaction of therapists to patient’s suicide was measured immediately, after 2 weeks, and after 6 months. Results: Three out of ten therapists suffer from severe distress after a patients’ suicide. The item “overall distress” immediately after the suicide predicts emotional reactions and changes in behavior. The emotional responses immediately after the suicide explained 43.5% of the variance of total distress in a regression analysis. Limitations: The retrospective nature of the study is its primary limitation. Conclusions: Our data suggest that identifying the severely distressed subgroup could be done using a visual analog scale for overall distress. As a consequence, more specific and intensified help could be provided to these professionals.


Author(s):  
Avi Max Spiegel

This chapter seeks to understand how Islamist movements have evolved over time, and, in the process, provide important background on the political and religious contexts of the movements in question. In particular, it shows that Islamist movements coevolve. Focusing on the histories of Morocco's two main Islamist movements—the Justice and Spirituality Organization, or Al Adl wal Ihsan (Al Adl) and the Party of Justice and Development (PJD)—it suggests that their evolutions can only be fully appreciated if they are relayed in unison. These movements mirror one another depending on the competitive context, sometimes reflecting, sometimes refracting, sometimes borrowing, sometimes adapting or even reorganizing in order to keep up with the other.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 401-422
Author(s):  
Estelle Variot
Keyword(s):  
The One ◽  

"Etymological, Lexical and Semantic Correspondences in the Process of Feminization of Professional Names, Trades and Activities in French and Romanian Societies. The feminization of thought represented by language and of its varieties in the Roman World has allowed to highlight some convergences that come from a common linguistic heritage, often from Greek and Latin and some hesitation about adapting society to its realities. The feminization of some words which comes from an ancient process illustrates on the one hand the potential of the language and on the other hand some constraints sometimes linked to the society itself, which creates transitional periods, between matching grammatical correction and the evolution of linguistic uses over time. The possibilities of lexical enrichment (internal creation or loan) show the means available in French and Romanian and some convergences in the area of derivation, of lexical units and their etymologies. The grammatical perspective and word constructing methods make it possible to give keys for the feminization of names of trades or professions. Likewise, recording entries in the lexicon, their evolution, their assimilation or sometimes their forgetfulness, for the benefit of new constructions highlight the existence of objective and subjective criteria which teach us a lot about society as a whole. Keywords: feminization of professions, internal and external enrichment, suffixal match, use of words, grammar, lexicon, French and Romanian."


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